Originally Posted by Electrequiem
But since 1967, Israel has let their power and backing by powerful friends get to their heads. They have been trodding on a path of arrogance ever since.

The way I see it, if Israel was originally the victim [of the Arabs], they'd be morally if not legally justified to trod the path of arrogance and disregard for the Palestinians.

There quite a few examples that can be cited to show just how unfair the bulk of the conversation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is. I myself have gone full circle in this regard. Until going off to college I had been quite staunchly pro-Palestinian. Then for a period of several years I was either enlightened to the point of naivete or just delusional but I believed that Israel genuinely wanted peace and while I was still very pro-Palestinian I had very favorable views about Israel that can be evidenced from old BC threads (New Peace Proposal, Discussion of ME Conflict Origins with Arnab). But over the last couple of years, I'm not sure Israel wants peace. There may be some polls that show that about half of Israelis believe in a two-state solution, but this is something that is not a priority for them. Israel already enjoys every advantage including virtual peace. You probably have a better chance of winning the Powerball than getting hit by a Hamas rocket. There are millions of Americans in the hood who would love to live in a city as safe as Sderot. So I've gone from being very critical of Israel to being moderately critical and now back to being very critical again.

The basic thing, and very few on BC would argue against this so this isn't really as much of a debate point here, is that the Palestinians are basically being made to pay for the crimes of anti-Semitic Europe. The Arabs have been made the scapegoat.

Here are a number of analogous situations and how people would react to it:

1) Most Americans are pretty staunch in their support for Israel. However, if you turned the tables, I'd imagine most of them would be furious. Native Americans and Black Americans have been historically ill-treated up to and including genocide, theft, slavery, discrimination, and psychological harm. If this was not true we wouldn't have black history month or learn about the Trail of Tears or even celebrate Thanksgiving. So now imagine taking a tiny piece of land like, relatively devoid of natural resources like New Jersey and forcing all non Indians and non African Americans out. How would that go down in America? Well, thats exactly how Palestinians feel.

2) Gypsies fled from India voluntarily/under coercsion about 1000 years ago. They were ridiculed and marginalized in Europe worse than any Jews - who actually integrated well and flourished by and large. They were also systematically murdered during the Holocaust. What if we decided to take a tiny part of a large country like India, say Goa or Haryana and force everyone out and put the Gypsies there and create a new country called Romanistan. How would Indians feel about it? Do you think Delhi would accept it if the UN mandated it and every country voted yes? Of course not.

3) There may be more than just empty air fueling Muslim conspiracy theorists...South Sudan and East Timor got independence much easier and quicker than did Palestine, while the list of Muslim failures (Palestine, Burma, Thailand, Phillipines, Chechnya, Dagestan) number more than successes (Pakistan/Bangladesh). Bosnia and Kosovo are only half successes because Yugoslavia burst into 7 countries of which Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Macedonia are Christian.